Inspired by the 2005 floods, Dilip da Cunha and his wife, Anuradha Mathur, who teach design and landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, have spent the last two and a half years studying Mumbai and its uneasy relationship with water. They recently released their findings and 12 proposals for making the city more resilient to floods in the form of a museum exhibit and a book, both titled “Soak: Mumbai in an Estuary.”

OKRA landscape architects have won the prestigious “International Urban Design Competition for Wellesley Road and Park Lane in Croydon” in London. Lead consultant OKRA participates in this project with Urhahn Urban Design, Peter Brett Associates, Karakusevic Carson Architects and Soundings. The ambition for Croydon is to transform the area, which counts 350.000 inhabitants, into London’s “third city”, complementary to Westminster and the City of London. The transformation of Wellesley Road and Park Lane, the central axis in Croydon, is one of the key projects in Croydon. The assignment is to create a vibrant centre of the monstrous main infrastructure that nowadays divides the centre in two parts.

Harvard Park has been a no-man’s land after dark for decades. It’s location, at the borders of rival gang turf, has made it more a demilitarized zone than public space since the inception of this city’s oldest and most entrenched street gangs. So there was a giddy excitement among the thousand or so South Los Angeles neighbors who came last week to celebrate the park’s inclusion in Summer Night Lights, a program designed to combat gang violence by keeping lights on until midnight in some of the city’s roughest parks………..

“We received more than 500 registrations and 68 submissions for this year’s Laneways By George! Hidden Networks project to transform and explore the potential of City laneways with creative, innovative and inspiring high quality temporary artworks,” said Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP.

Eight teams have had their concepts selected by Curator and urban designer Dr Steffen Lehmann and the City’s Public Art Panel.

The proposed Laneways By George! 2009 – Hidden Networks temporary artworks will now go through the DA process, then if approved be installed in time for the City of Sydney’s Art & About event in October.

The installations are intended to remain in place until the end of The Sydney Festival in late January 2010.

CHANDIGARH: Internationally acclaimed US based architect Moshe Safdie, who had successfully accomplished the most prestigious project of Khalsa Heritage Centre (KHC), Sri Anandpur Sahib would soon undertake the beautification of the surroundings of Golden Temple (Sri Harimandir Sahib) along with the corridor project (Galiara) around the holy Golden Temple at Amritsar……….